A political podcast discussion on MFAT funding, Razor Gang savings proposals, AI's impact on public services, and ministerial travel standards, highlighting debates over cost-saving measures, political positioning, and public service transformation.
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Verbatim segments from politicians speaking on podcasts and radio shows about this topic. Sourced via the voice-reference library — each speaker has been confirmed manually from their voice clip. Click play to stream the original audio from the publisher, pre-seeked to the moment the quote starts.
Um, well, it's had a lot of debate, as you would imagine today in Parliament. Uh, because it is significant, uh, the announcement made yesterday by Nicola Willis. And what it's led to, of course, is um a lot of uh attention being paid to Winston Peters because you'll remember uh when the uh last uh Razor Gang took to the public service, 6.4%. I think they wanted savings uh from the uh public wage bill. Winston Peters was exempt from that in foreign affairs. And Winston has always, when he's foreign affairs under Helen Clark, he also he got a big boost to foreign affairs. That's why foreign affairs love him. But he is very good at that job, but nobody would deny that. And he's always argued that we should be well represented overseas, and I don't think anybody would argue with that either. But um uh what Willis uh was saying, uh, and not really opposing Winston's view, but saying uh maybe not this side of the election. Well, none of the big cuts will come the side of the election anyway. It'll be the other side. Well, it'll be three years or well, indeed. So it's a it's a slow uh train, this one actually. Uh she said in some cases both MFAT staff and her, for example, could start uh flying cattle class and uh not business. Well, I don't know whether that's going to save a lot of money and and it's it won't save a lot in terms of prestige either. I mean, I think a cabinet minister should be flying business class. In my view, and probably some people are saying, why shouldn't they just be like us? Well, they're like a chief executive of a pretty big company. Um so uh she said that the two ministers that's her and Winston have had extensive debate about uh MG's uh uh M FAT's ongoing funding. Um she said she always wants to communicate with Winston, the finance minister. She was being quizzed in Labour this uh by Labour this afternoon by her opposite number, Barbara Edam Ebmans, about what would appear to be contradictory statements coming from uh Winston Peters and her over MPFAT funding. Uh, not so says uh Willis.
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Barry Soper: Newstalk ZB senior political correspondent on MFAT avoiding cuts ahead of Budget 2026Spotted something wrong on this page? Report a correction.
